Almost 3.5 million look forward to Black Friday

Black Friday already conquered Hungary last year, and the stakes are even higher in 2017, with 3.3 million adult Hungarian internet users planning to take advantage of Black Friday deals. If all planned purchases were realised, the potential total turnover would reach a quarter of last year’s entire online trade volume, a recent online survey by eNET reveals.

Black Friday strikes again

Black Friday has taken Hungary by a storm: almost all internet users have heard about it, and a growing mass of customers is involved. Almost 2.1 million adult Hungarian internet users purchased discount goods on this occasion last year, and over 3.3 million of them are planning to take advantage of the discounts online or offline. To internet users, Black Friday is mostly an online affair, as half of those who plan to shop would do so both on the internet and in brick-and-mortar stores. One third wants to buy goods online only. The share of potential shoppers who like physical shops only is 10%.

Despite the masses of people that Black Friday can mobilise, conscious shopping is rare. Most people check out the web sites and stores offering discounts, but only one out of four internet users prepare thoroughly. One fifth of internet users just glimpse at the special deals, while one in ten people is not interested in Black Friday at all.

Toys, presents, household machinery and kitchen equipment rule

The upcoming Christmas leaves its mark on Black Friday shopping, too. Most customers go for toys, presents, household appliances or kitchen equipment, followed by entertainment electronics and clothing. One out of five potential Black Friday shoppers plans to buy a mobile phone, a drugstore / beauty item, or a book on those special days.

The top 5 webshops where internet users want to buy stuff on Black Friday are the following (in this order): eMAG, MediaMarkt, eDigital, Mall.hu, and Tesco.

An inevitable Black Friday-related question involves the ability of the Hungarian Post and courier services to cope with the deluge of orders. The measures introduced by postal authorities in response to this issue have been debated in online and offline media for days. Half of all internet users have heard about the recommendation to order Christmas presents bought from other countries at least two months before Christmas if the items are to be delivered by the Hungarian Post. (The authority has also announced a limitation of the number of parcels to be sent by one customer, but this is not included in our research because the announcement came in the data collection period.)

Internet users are also pessimistic about the delivery of Black Friday and Christmas parcels: regarding both periods, three out of four respondents consider massive delays certain or likely this year again.

Shopping brought forward; courier services

Wide-spread delivery delays caused an uproar after last year’s Black Friday and in the Christmas season. According to eNET’s research at that time, almost 900,000 online shoppers were affected. Have those experiences changed online shopping practices, and if so, how?

Online shoppers’ strategies to avoid potential problems related to late delivery include bringing shopping forward, and selecting the delivery method / courier service more carefully. As a less frequent solution, customers plan to collect their parcels personally instead of trusting a delivery agent. But fortunately, last year’s issues have not shaken the basic faith in webshops and online shopping: few respondents claimed that they would not order goods from a webshop that had delivered late last year, or that they would not buy presents online at all in the Christmas period.

Last year’s events have not affected the shopping habits of four tenths of regular online customers at all, and this is true for one third (36%) of the internet users planning to take advantage of Black Friday deals.

In any case, online Black Friday customers have no better idea than trusting in the courier services (80% of them would opt for that delivery method for Black Friday parcels) and hoping that logistics providers will perform better this year.

eNET

About the survey: eNET interviewed 874 members (internet users older than 18 years) of the online research community VeVa.hu on 10-14 November 2017. The results are representative of the views of adult Hungarian internet users by gender, age and region.